Synopsis
Don't be afraid of biostatistics anymore! The new fifth edition of PRIMER OF BIOSTATISTICS introduces this challenging topic in a readable and enjoyable format that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject. In no time, you'll understand test selection and be able to evaluate biomedical statistics critically and knowledgeably.
You'll start with the basics, including analysis of variance and the t test, then advance to a multiple comparison testing, contingency tables, regression, and more. Examples from the current literature illustrate key concepts throughout.
New:
* More on multiple comparison testing, including the Holm test
* Discussion of relative risks and odds ratios
* Updated examples from the literature
To run statistical tests of your own data, turn to PRIMER OF BIOSTATISTICS: THE PROGRAM, available in Windows. This remarkably practical, affordable menu-driven program contains everything you need to perform meaningful analysis of your data. Use THE PROGRAM alone or in concert with the text. Available at your bookstore or directly from the publisher (in the USA, call 1-800-262-4729).
Of related interest Glantz & Slinker/PRIMER OF APPLIED REGRESSION & ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2001). Revised and expanded, this is the perfect sequel to PRIMER OF BIOSTATISTICS. Available at bookstores everywhere.
About the Author Professor Glantz conducts research on tobacco control and cardiology. He is author or co-author of over 100 scientific papers and 6 books, including this book and Primer of Applied Regression and Analysis of Variance, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2001). He wrote the first major review (published in Circulation) which identified involuntary smoking as a cause of heart disease, and the landmark July 19, 1995 issue of JAMA on the Brown and Williamson documents, which showed that the tobacco industry knew 30 years ago that nicotine is addictive and that smoking causes cancer. His work has attracted considerable attention from the tobacco industry, which has sued the University of California twice (unsuccessfully) in an effort to stop Professor Glantz's work.
Doody Review Services
Reviewer:Sharon M. Homan, PhD(Kansas Health Institute)
Description:This book reviews basic principles of biostatistics and their use in biomedical and clinical research and decision making. The author organizes the text around hypothesis testing and estimation of treatment effects, and particularly emphasizes areas that the medical literature uses dubious practices (e.g., failure to adjust for multiple comparisons). This sixth edition is a substantial revision with updated examples and a complete redesign of illustrations, both improving the presentation of core statistical principles.
Purpose:It is oriented to students, postdoctoral research fellows, professors, and practitioners in medicine. The purpose is to review basic principles of biostatistics, with emphasis on mastering descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, and research design. The book achieves these objectives using a straightforward teaching style of posing questions (e.g., How do you analyze rates and proportions?) and systematically demonstrating how to address the question. The content is interesting, practical, and is reinforced by review questions and summaries for each chapter.
Audience:This can be used as a text for medical students, health professionals, and researchers. Used as a required text for the biostatistics portion of the epidemiology and biostatistics course required of medical students, this book is clear, concise, and practical. The author is a professor of medicine at the Cancer Center of the University of California, San Francisco, who is recognized for his contributions to using biostatistics in clinical practice.
Features:Thebook teaches basic descriptive and inferential methods for one and two samples, introduces power, sample size, confidence intervals, and measurement. The author illustrates how to properly use statistical techniques including t tests, linear regression, analysis of variance, rank tests, Kaplan Meier survival curves, and Gehan tests. The highlights of the book are the chapter summaries, excellent examples, and final chapter, "What do the data really show?" The final chapter demonstrates how the research question, research design, and measurement influence the choice of statistical procedures. This edition greatly expands coverage of important statistical techniques used in the medical literature, but logistic regression is omitted. Logistic regression is used much more often in clinical and epidemiological research than linear regression.
Assessment:This well written book is highly useful for medical students and clinicians, and easy to understand. There are many introductory biostatistics and medical statistics texts, but three key features set this one apart: it assumes no prior knowledge of biostatistics, can be read and absorbed by the novice in about 15 hours, and greatly enhances the reader's ability to use and evaluate the clinical literature.